That was one of the earlier comparisons performed I still remember a few weeks later when i was going to add in another blade and realized I had no way to press on the rolls with the same force so the sharpness measurement was not overly useful as a reference standard which lead to the development of the way I currently measure it by light cord/thread and some cutting tests, which are illustrated in the Deerhunter comparison and the WGS competition.
There are a also a few other problems with that cited work such as there is no measurement of initial sharpness and everything should be repeated at least three times as a stability check and for completeness you want to check both push/pull sharpness and at least two finishes (coarse/fine). I added updates to the older work about 2-3 years ago noting these issues, even with all those problems though, it still generated useful information a lot of which was just putting numbers on the ideas proposed by Alvin, Mike and Joe on rec.knives regarding the effect of hardness, wear resistance, edge profile and grit finish on sharpness, cutting ability and edge retention.
I am currently putting together a webpage on blade materials attempting to summarize the work done in the comparisons as well as pull in data sheets off the web as well as materials information from tool steel books and all the information Alvin has posted on rec.knives about wear resistance, grain size and heat treating. It is taking forever because each time I add a steel I have to reread the older reviews which ends up with long sessions cleaning up the older work because many of the reviews were patched together piecemeal as I did them so they end up looking much like my FORTRAN 77 code and cleaning that up I would not wish on anyone.
-Cliff
